The Bascom: A Center for Visual Arts in Highlands, North Carolina invited Flora Rosefsky and six other artists to participate in the exhibition Appropriation Art: Finding Meaning in Found Image Collage, being held in the The Bascom’s Loft Gallery from March 7-May 31, 2015. A reception and panel discussion takes place on April 18, 5-7pm.
The Bascom Center is located at 323 Franklin Road in Highlands, NC. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10-5 and on Sundays, from 12-5.
The artists in the exhibition include: Aldwyth (Hilton Head, SC); Radcliffe Bailey (Atlanta, GA); Jim Collins (Chattanooga, TN/Highlands, NC); Guerra de la Paz (Miami, FL); Aaron Hequembourg (Monticello, GA); Flora Rosefsky (Decatur, GA) and Fatimah Tuggar (Toronto, CAN). www.bascom.org
Exhibition curator Margaret Browne says, “The artists in this show are drawing on a huge range of found images-consumer culture, news media, art history, vernacular photographs, vintage materials. This show was designed to create a strong sense of compression of time and space, because that might be the defining phenomenon of contemporary life. We have access to images of anything, at any time, literally at our fingertips, thanks to the Internet and our mobile devices-we’re living in the future, and we can be anywhere at once. Yet so many of us still feel a longing for a simpler past, so we’re drawn to nostalgia-which is always available to us, too.”
Flora Rosefsky builds poignant collages out of old family photos and ephemera inspired by Wycinanki paper cutting (a Polish folk art form). The folk-art element and the layers of mementos create a tangible monument to a Jewish family’s history and heritage. The overall effect, though, is thoroughly contemporary–her pieces freely combine everything from children’s drawings to slightly blurred snapshots to her father-in-law’s stamp collection. “It shows how traditional boundaries that defined “fine art” as something apart from everyday life are irrelevant now. Artists like Flora have more freedom in choosing their content and their approach.”
Flora Rosefsky will also be leading a family workshop, Family Memories: Found Paper Collage with Flora Rosefsky, in conjunction with the exhibition on April 18th, 10-12noon. Flora Rosefsky will lead a brief overview tour of the exhibition before participants create their own collage works of art using ephemera, magazine and other paper cutouts, photographs and/or photo copies to be part of their compositions. Free and open to the public, class registration and reservations are suggested.
